


Fan Interference is a Stand-Up Double

by Sab, wearemany



Category: Sports Night
Genre: (Uploaded by Punk), Baseball, Co-Written, Coming Out, Flashbacks, M/M, Rumors from 2001, Sports Journalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-06-28
Updated: 2001-06-28
Packaged: 2017-11-29 12:38:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/687046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sab/pseuds/Sab, https://archiveofourown.org/users/wearemany/pseuds/wearemany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan ran out of money in Kansas City. It was 1988. (Uploaded by Punk, from slashsn.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fan Interference is a Stand-Up Double

**Author's Note:**

> Portions of this story were written at the Raytown Sports Complex and Royals Park, KCMO, and at Hank's Tavern, Brooklyn. Thanks to groundskeepers and bartenders for not kicking out the two little girls with the notebook. Additional thanks to Allen Iverson, Larry Brown and the 2001 Philadelphia 76ers. Little Nicky ran stats; Jesse doesn't like violence. And the rest of the gratitude belongs to Dawn, because she liked it and because she reads well, and Punk, because she helped.

"GRADY SANDERSON," KIM said. "It's definitely Grady Sanderson." Dan looked up from his phone call, wondering how she'd be so sure Grady Sanderson was calling him, or why Grady would even be calling him in the first place, except he wasn't, apparently, because none of the other lines were flashing.

Everyone else in the conference room was talking about baseball players, and Dan was on hold. Kim and Elliott and Dave kept lobbing the names of mediocre athletes around the conference room like they were supposed to mean something, like there was a common denominator. Dan drew a daisy chain up the notebook's side and tried to figure out what they were talking about.

"No, no way," Elliott said. "Sanderson's not even on the right team."

"No kidding," Kim said, laughing, and Dan hummed along with the hold music under his breath.

"It could be Gravlaugh, but he's married," Dave offered inexplicably.

"Nope," Jeremy said. "Divorced. Right before he got traded." Dana's eyebrows were darker than the rest of her hair. Dan wondered for the first time if she was, in fact, a natural blonde.

Dana looked exasperated at losing control of the meeting and broke in with, "That doesn't mean --"

"Please," Kim said. "It's so got to be Baxter."

"He's really cute," Natalie said, and someone on the other end of the phone came on the line and Dan waved his hand around, trying to get them to shut up. Casey had gone to some morning promotion on WFAN hours ago and everyone was out of control.

"He is," Dana agreed, and they giggled.

"Oh!" Kim squealed. "I know who it is!"

Dan plugged an ear. He yelled that he had to go and hung up on someone mid-sentence.

"Kim, you've known who it is twelve times already," Jeremy was saying, and Kim kicked him.

Sanderson, Gravlaugh, Baxter, and Dan thought he'd heard Kim say Marino earlier.

"I know," Kim said insistently, and they all waited. "It's Jake Warren."

Jeremy oohed and Natalie ahhed and Dana nodded authoritatively. Dan picked up his notebook and walked out.

&&

DAN RAN OUT of money in Kansas City. It was 1988.

The Tulsa Tornadoes' bus looked like a Jiffy Pop pan and the late-July Missouri sun glinted off Jake's aviator glasses as he smoked a cigarette and half-heartedly kicked the dirt. Dan was sitting on a fence and wondering if he had anything he could sell.

"What about the tape recorder?" Jake asked. He wasn't a big guy, about five-eleven, but he had big shoulders and his neck was thin and wiry. Short blond hair peeked out the back of his cap, trimmed military-style.

Dan huffed and then coughed a little on dust, wiped his nose with his sleeve. "Not so much," he said.

Jake looked at his watch. "We gotta get back on the bus," he said. "We should eat."

"You're buying?"

Jake eyed him. "You're really broke?" Like he was actually suspicious, like he felt like Dan was duping him somehow, and Dan tried not to chuckle.

Dan nodded. "I have three bucks in my pocket, I think I might have a twenty in the hotel in my brown jacket. Which is twenty-three bucks."

"That's not broke."

"You make a hundred thousand dollars a year," Dan said. "You need to start living like a big leaguer. Starting, my friend, by buying me dinner."

"I'm from Tennessee," Jake said, and his utter earnestness made Dan a little fluttery, not for the first time. "Plus, this is Kansas City, after all."

"I'm saying, rookie, you've got to start getting used to being able to afford things of luxury, things like, you know, food."

Jake squinted at him. "You're not -- I mean, you're still sticking around, right?"

"The thing's not done," Dan said. "As long as the thing's not done, I figure I'll still be scribbling." He really wasn't convinced that was true -- just this morning he'd almost resigned himself to picking up the phone and having Dad send him a plane ticket home. Two months out of school and he was ready to just hang up his pen and his tape recorder and forget about this pipe dream of a story. But Jake was cradling his wrist where he'd slammed into the left field wall at Wrigley Field and looking at Dan as if he wanted a better answer. "I'm sticking around," Dan said decisively. "Contingent upon you buying me dinner."

And then Jake nodded and the bus driver came back from taking a piss in the trees, and they all got back on the bus, off to find out where people ate in Kansas City.

 

A SIX-PACK of beer, three down, three to go, hung by the plastic ring from Dan's pinky as they stood in front of Jake's hotel door, and that much was the same as the night before.

They should figure this out, Dan thought, because sometime around the check coming he'd started to wonder what it meant, the thing they'd done. "You tired?" he asked.

Jake just grunted again, rubbed his wrist and winced. Dan reached out to touch the purpled flesh and thought about doing an injury list for a sidebar. Like, three months before the club got sold to Mark Dunhill and he built a new stadium on the bluff of an up-and-coming city, the Tornadoes played like warriors, and the injury count was high. Like that.

Jake had one shoulder up against the wall and Dan decided that he didn't really care what it all meant as long as it happened again. He pulled the keycard out of Jake's hand and unlocked the door.

"I don't know why people seem to -- people always think I'm strange," Jake had said the night before, over a couple beers at the hotel bar. "I just -- he was my baby brother, you know? Taking care of him was sorta my job."

Dan nodded twice. "That I do," he said. Dan fit his lips around the mouth of his beer bottle and swallowed the last trickle of warm backwash.

"Yeah? So you get what I'm saying?" Jake's face was shiny, flushed, and he was smiling. "I know for sure Dad would have sent Patrick off to military school if I hadn't said I'd have taken responsibility. You know, he was busting up cars, stealing shit, fucking around with these real skanky girls. But he's a good guy, you know, he's just a kid."

"Tell me about him," Dan had said, and Jake had paid for another round and when they went up to his hotel room, later, Jake showed Dan the baseball he was sending to Patrick, the one he'd gotten Ryne Sandburg to sign even though the Tornadoes had struck him out his first two at bats.

"Patrick's a big fan of Sandburg?" Dan had asked.

Jake shrugged. "He'll probably sell it. But I gotta give it to him anyway."

"Yeah," Dan had said.

Now the baseball was packed into an inner pouch of one of Jake's banged up American Touristers. Housekeeping had made the bed, they'd changed the sheets and now nobody would know, and that made Dan feel sort of weird and sad.

"How's your wrist?" Dan asked, sitting down on the credenza next to the television.

Jake pursed his lips. "You -- I was thinking," he said, looking at the floor, and Dan shifted on the particleboard and steepled his fingers at his chin and waited. "You're really broke?" Jake asked.

Dan exhaled and his stomach hurt. "Don't worry about it."

"I could loan you money, is all," Jake said, and it sounded like a confession, like he was guilty of something, and Dan wanted to be somewhere else.

"Don't worry about it," Dan said again, more carefully. "Seriously, man."

"I -- you know I'm not used to this," Jake said, but Dan didn't know if he meant having money or playing in the majors or whatever they hadn't figured out was happening here, though he didn't figure it mattered and it was all the same. "You know that."

"I do indeed," Dan said. "And I'm saying you don't need to worry about me."

"Okay," Jake said, but he sounded dubious and he turned away and started to unbutton his shirt. "I'm just --"

"Hey man," Dan said, and then the words came out before he could weigh them. "I'm not your brother."

Jake peered up over his shoulder, gazed at Dan with round, dark eyes. His forehead and cheeks were pink from sunburn, his face beefy and sweaty and solid. "I know that," he said, nodding once. "And I ain't your dad, either."

 

"THE THING IS, we're all just lucky to be playing ball for a living," Mike said. They were barreling down I-35 for a double-header with the Twins. Mike McNamara threw a curve that fell off the table and could pitch a hundred and seven before he broke a sweat. But he was just one cliche after another, and Dan had spent weeks asking the same question in different ways, trying to get an honest answer.

"But if you get sold," Dan said, one more time, "how will this season have been any different?"

"You just gotta work hard and, Lord willing, things'll be just fine."

Dan snorted. His dad's was full of cliches, too, but his were usually things like "throwing away a good thing" and "breaking your mother's heart." Still, Dan's newswriting prof had gotten the Tulsa paper to pony up a thousand bucks in expenses for this ridealong piece, the last days of a once-great team, just months away from being sold. And probably even if Duke Hayes turned out to be the winningest manager since Earl Weaver, the Tornadoes were gonna get pried up off their foundation like a house and towed off to Charlotte or Orlando or whoever turned out to be the highest bidder.

But first, Dan was going to write their story, and when he got done showing how baseball owners were tearing apart the most underrated ballclub in the country for a bigger stadium and a better bottom line, his dad would realize it had been the right decision, and someone at Sports Illustrated would return Dan's calls and he would have a real job, the kind he could stand getting up for every day.

"You get to my part yet?" Vince Clavell yelled in Dan's ear, climbing over from the next seat.

"Got something new to say?" Dan asked, grinning. Nine weeks in and the guys never kicked him out of the clubhouse, never stopped trying to get their life story in the lead, always trying to be the hero. And he wouldn't have been stuck behind a desk for anything in the world.

"I could've played for the Red Sox," Clavell said for probably the twentieth time. "And I was supposed to get traded off this goddamned team last year." Clavell was the relief pitcher, three blown saves already this season, and Dan knew as well as the rest of the team that he wasn't going to get traded anywhere, that he'd be lucky to stay on the roster next year.

Manny Montoya was sitting in the back, spread across three seats and balancing a guitar on top of the ice bag on his knee, and he kept sliding between "Black Magic Woman" and "Oye Como Va" like they were the same song and nobody else seemed to notice. Dan chewed on the end of his pen and leaned back. "This is going to be a very short story, I suspect," he said. Manny hadn't said much yet. "Poco. Poquito."

"I'm just saying," Clavell said. "I don't see why I gotta end my career with you bunch of losers." He was only half-kidding, but the important half.

"Fuck you, cocksucker." Reggie Harris, the first baseman, popped open a can of Sprite and kicked Mike's seat.

"You want me to suck your cock, is that what you said?" Clavell laughed. "I didn't quite hear you there, bro. You looking for your daddy?"

"Yeah," Dan said, banging the back of his head against the window. "A real short story I'm writing."

"Okay, listen up." Duke Hayes stood behind a green fleece seat and banged his palm on the roof of the bus. "Listen up." Hayes had been an Oriole for twenty years and he loved the Tornadoes like a flock of unruly children, and they --somewhat grudgingly for all his grizzly brilliance -- loved him back.

"I want to talk about the batting lineup for tonight," Hayes said. "We gotta try and work around Zale's elbow but I don't want to take Miller out of the order because he's holding up real nice down there at third."

Dan looked at Jake across the aisle. In Oklahoma, before the road trip, Dan had come down to the field to work on some scene-setting, something about the fading cries of fans, the lights turned off at the end of the last game, the way Salister Park would feel when it was finally empty. But it hadn't been empty. Jake had been there, just Jake and the pitching machine, and the twenty-two-year-old rookie from Tennessee had been hitting them in a clean, even rotation around the field. Skirting first base. Just to the left of where the second baseman would be. Between the shortstop and second base. In front of the shortstop. And he'd swing back like a sprinkler, but it wasn't ground balls on the return trip, it was a clean shot over the left field fence, a pop fly to dead center, a slam into the right bleachers. And back to clipping first's cleats.

Dan had been sure if he breathed too loudly he'd break the streak. Jake had a swing like Ginger Rogers was waiting for him up the baseline, and Dan had wished he'd listened when his mom had said he should learn to dance.

Jake didn't look back across the bus at Dan, just flipped up his sunglasses on his head and listened to Duke. After Dan ran out of money, Jake had let him crash in his hotel room. Twelve games on the road, and Jake had been picking up the tab and reaching over at three a.m., and they still weren't talking about it.

"Anyone want to try their hand at slamming a few out of the park?" Duke asked. Jake slumped down in his seat a little, and Clavell volunteered, and everyone else fell into place around that. Jake went second, like usual, because he was the guy who could hit behind the runner every time. Dan didn't say anything.

 

THEY LOST, AND bad, 8-1, would've been a shut-out but Manny hit a grounder in the seventh and McPhee made it safe. That left Jake stranded on third with two outs before Clavell flung up a dozen fouls and finally got pinched, and that was pretty much the game.

Dan sat around the hotel room for a while, staring at the pink paisley pattern in the bedspread, the stitching like little unfurled baseballs. Then he headed down to the batting cage next to the stadium and there was Jake sitting on a bench, stack of quarters on the machine, nobody else around. Dan said Jake's name softly and sat beside him, their shoulders touching.

"I hate losing," Jake said flatly.

"Yeah," Dan said, because who didn't.

"No, I mean --" Jake shook his head and kicked his shoes together. "I really hate it. I suck at it. I just -- my dad is always talking how I have to learn to walk away." He rubbed at the back of his neck and stared at the ground.

"Yeah," Dan said. "But -- you're better than Clavell. Shit, you're better than Zale, and he's --"

Jake shook his head. "That's not me."

Dan put a hand on Jake's knee. "But we could really show them -- I mean, Duke and everyone would --" Jake stood up.

"Not we, dude," Jake said slowly. "You're not a part of this team."

"Fine," Dan said, his stomach tight and his eyes sore, "but you are. And this could make the difference. You would be -- God, you would be amazing at fourth. You'd be breaking records faster than they could dig them up." Jake Warren, the rookie who saved a ballclub with the sweetest swing since DiMaggio, finally found his home batting cleanup.

Jake leaned back against the chainlink and the fence rattled. "I'm not the only guy on the team." He palmed his cap and slapped it lightly against the metal, and he looked sad.

"But you could --" Dan wanted to stand there in the dugout with the guys and scream Jake's name as the runs poured in. He wanted to believe that the Tornadoes could make their own fate.

"I'm not that player," Jake said, jutting his neck out toward Dan. "You have this idea -- this story."

Dan looked away. It wasn't just about the story.

"Only thing's gonna keep us out of Carolina is Mark Dunhill forgetting where he left his checkbook, and you -- damn it, you know it. So just stop -- just stop thinking you're a part of this team. When this is over, you can go back to wherever you came from, and we've all gotta find ourselves a new job. And you have no idea what that feels like, man, to get this far and know you're gonna have to start all over."

For a guy like Jake Warren, that was damn near a state of the union address, and Dan wondered if he'd be able to remember it well enough to quote later, because no way would it happen again, and if he got enough, if he could grab the essence of it, Jake could be at the center of his story. The rookie team player whose wings melted in the heat of the majors.

Dan came off the bench and boxed Jake in against the fence, putting his hands on Jake's waist and looking up into his face. "Okay," Dan said, and kissed him, and when Jake put his hands on Dan's chin, Dan could taste chalk. There was a smear of greasepaint under Jake's right eye and Dan ran a thumb through it. Jake's lips were strong and his hands were squeezing Dan's arms and Dan wanted to sink to his knees right there in the dugout dirt. Jake's dick was as blunt and insistent and beautiful as his baseline trot and when he'd been thrusting it down Dan's throat the night before, everything had made a hell of a lot more sense.

Dan worked his fingers around to Jake's zipper and licked the sweat off Jake's neck and Jake moaned a little before pushing him away. "Let's go -- let's go get a beer," Jake said, putting his cap back on.

 

THE REAL STEREO was busted, she said, but she'd flipped on the black Sony boom box for them, and Vince was throwing back tequila shots to the tune of "Love in an Elevator." There was a framed felt pennant hung on the knotty fake-wood paneling behind the bar, and in loud letters it commemorated the Twins' victory over the Padres in '82. Gabe and Olly shot spitballs at the glass.

"You gonna come back here clean that up?" the bartender asked, holding a shot glass between two fingers, just out of Olly's reach.

"You want me to come back there, baby?"

She rolled her eyes. "Four dollars," she said, and tequila splashed over her thumb as she set the glass down.

Dan tried to smile at her, but she never met his gaze. She was used to the team, used to any team blowing through, and she treated all the players the same --my boys, she called them, even before she knew their names.

She was either thirty or fifty, ageless, blonde hair held back from her face with a rubber band, wifebeater tank top hanging across a bra strap a little, and most of her lipstick chewed off.

"Hey," Dan said, because somehow the second he'd walked in she knew he was different, and she'd been ignoring him for that. "Can I get a black-and-tan when you have a chance?"

"You know," she said. "I make a real lousy black-and-tan."

He nodded, pressing his lips together. "That's cool."

"Nah," she said. "I mean, real lousy. I suck at a black-and-tan. If you wanna wait till Earl gets back from break --"

"I'll just do a straight Guinness, then," Dan said, because this conversation was taking ridiculously long and he felt young and silly.

Door swung open, and Jake came in with Duke and Roddy McPhee. Jake had changed into a sport shirt, he'd shaved, put on jeans and sneakers and Dan could imagine just how he smelled, like toothpaste and shampoo and clean laundry. Dan swallowed hard, and noticed that the bartender'd been sizing Jake up too.

"Well, hello, beautiful thing," she said, slapping the Guinness tap off with the side of her hand and handing the beer to Dan without looking at him. "Sorry about the game tonight."

"Yeah," Jake said, sitting down at the bar, not next to Dan, but with only a couple empty stools between them.

Roddy, the hulking center fielder, sat down too and slapped Jake on the back of the head. "This one played a hell of a game, though," he said. "This one's gonna be our lucky charm."

Jake snorted. "Lemme get a Corona?"

"Sure thing." Bartender leaned over and Dan could see she was wearing white men's jockey shorts, and for some reason he was desperately turned on.

"I'm serious, man," Roddy said.

"Right," Jake said unenthusiastically. He didn't look at Dan, and Dan didn't say anything.

The radio started in on the Bangles, "Eternal Flame," and Gabe and Olly, well past soused, started singing along.

Roddy laughed. "Hey, boys, you know what's gotta happen for rookie here tonight?"

Vince raised his eyebrows. "Time to meet the fans?"

Roddy nodded, eyes flashing wickedly. "Time to meet the people."

"Party with the people," Olly stopped singing. "That's just what our boy Jake needs."

"Yep," said Roddy. "Nothing to make a rookie feel like he's part of the team like showing him the fans love him."

Dan drank his beer and wondered if it would look obnoxious if he pulled his notebook out.

"Hey, Stella," Olly called to the bartender, whose name, Dan was sure, wasn't Stella. "What city we in, again?"

"St. Paul," not-Stella said.

"Mmm," Olly mused. "You got any, you know, baseball fans around here tonight?"

She cackled. "Sure, we got fans," she said. "There's Rudy Ciccione over by the jukebox, he's still got most of his teeth."

"Be nice," Olly said.

"I'm very nice," she grinned. "And, yeah, baby. We got fans. Julie works upstairs, she's a real nice girl."

A cry went up, some sarcastic nods. "Julie, excellent," said Roddy.

And then Dan got it, and he was glad he hadn't taken his notebook out, and he swallowed the rest of his Guinness so he wouldn't accidentally say something.

"I been known to participate in the game myself," the bartender said.

Olly sucked his teeth. "You're mine, baby," he said. "We ain't wasting you on Jake, here, you'd break his little heart."

Dan wanted to be somewhere cold and alone. He took his jacket off and scrunched it in a pile on the bar. He didn't look at Jake.

"What's happening, now?" Jake asked.

"You're about to find out what life on the road is really like," the bartender who wasn't Stella said.

Jake grinned, big and toothy, a weird innocent grin Dan had never seen. "I'm game," he said. "Just show me what to do."

Roddy and Olly and Vince and Gabe all laughed and snorted and tequila spilled on the waxy bar. "You'll probably figure it out," Gabe said. "You're a smart boy."

And then Roddy clapped his hands on Jake's shoulders and pulled him to his feet, and there were catcalls and whoops and the bartender jerked a thumb toward the Miller's High Life clock, neon sign that showed the way to the bathroom and points beyond.

Dan didn't watch, but he heard Jake laughing like a ten-year-old as Roddy steered him back toward the stairs.

 

THE DOOR HANDLE slammed against the wall and Jake fell into the room. Dan could hear Roddy and Gabe in the hallway, one of them saying, "Don't wake Dan, he might write something bad about all of us," and Dan faked like he was still asleep. The door shut and the weak spring of his mattress crunched as Jake sat down.

"Dan, you awake?" Dan squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to move. Jake leaned down to untie his boots, his back pressed up against Dan's. Shoes off, Jake nudged Dan again. "Dude, I know you're awake."

Dan rolled onto his back and Jake's mouth opened into a grin. He reeked of beer and tequila and cigarette smoke and Dan coughed. Jake killed the light and pushed Dan to the other side of the bed, flopping down fully clothed. Dan turned and Jake reached an arm around and put his hand down Dan's boxers. "Leave me alone," Dan mumbled, pulling away. Jake tried again and Dan shrugged his shoulder and scooted farther over.

"You don't want --" Jake stretched an arm out toward the headboard and tried to tug Dan's waist toward him. "Danny..." he whispered. "I thought --" Jake was sliding a hand up under Dan's shirt, and he sounded maybe fourteen years old, confused and lost and unsure and Danny wanted to give in, he wanted to forget he ever set foot in that stupid fucking bar. But under the smoke, Dan could smell something like hairspray and he pushed away again.

"Julie wasn't enough for you?" he asked, feeling psyched out and hating himself for saying it aloud.

Jake pulled back, like maybe he'd just remembered that Dan had been there. "It wasn't -- I mean, they all --"

"Right, you're just a team player." Dan resolutely rolled over to sleep and eventually Jake moved to the other bed. When Jake's alarm went off at five for his morning run, Dan called his mother and got her to wire money for a ticket. He was at the Greyhound station jotting notes on a copy of last night's program before the rest of the team woke up. Once he was gone, it turned out, the writing was easy. Jake Warren, the rookie batting second, was always a team player first, and in the months before the Tulsa Tornadoes got pried off their foundation and hauled off to Charlotte by Mark Dunhill, the injury count was too high.

 

LARRY HOWARD WAS an old-school editor. That's what he always yelled at Dan right before he hung up, an old-school editor with a fifth in the bottom drawer and less patience than a cunt in heat, and what Larry Howard wanted right then was anything that wouldn't make him piss off an old J-school friend because he had to bust Dan's balls for fucking around with an expense account and not filing a piece.

"I want it now," Larry yelled, and in a phone booth in Mason City, Iowa, Dan held the receiver away from his ear. "Whatever you've got, scribble it out or call it in or whatever, but I want the fucking story now. We've got shit to run for this weekend."

"The thing is --"

"Tomorrow, Danny boy, in my hot little hands, or you can haul water for the Tornadoes till you have enough pocket change to pay me back." Larry hung up, and Dan laughed shakily. The story was done, anyway, or close, and if he could have three hours at a typewriter the rest would be finished up and he could get off the bus.

So Dan sat at the desk of some reporter who was on vacation and called his mom while Larry read, and when Larry stormed out Dan felt queasy. It was too Rolling Stone, too Bull Durham. He should have just written it straight, saved the flashy stuff for an editor who wasn't drunk by the three o'clock.

"This is it?"

"Well," Dan swallowed hard, and then he was pissed for a second, because this guy couldn't see that Dan had done something good here, and fuck Jake Warren if he didn't want to hit a home run. He cleared his throat. "I mean, I could --"

"No, I mean, this is fucking IT, my boy. You wet-behind-the-ears cocksucking kid, where the hell you been hiding these chops this whole time? We gotta dig up a photog to go shoot this Warren kid, maybe some new pics of Hayes, and we are good to go."

Dan looked at the phone receiver hanging in his hand, brought it back to his ear and heard his mom yelling to his father to pick up the extension.

"And see if you can get Hank Nevins to give you an hour today, you can add a sidebar or something, he's always good for some asshole owner quotes, and then I've got this thing over in Dallas I want you to do on Tuesday." Dan nodded. "Who the fuck are you talking to?"

Dan rolled his head back in disbelief, then sat up in the chair. "Dad," he said into the mouthpiece, nodding at Larry. "I'll send you a copy, Dad, I gotta go."

&&

"YOU KNOW WHY Jake Warren's gotta be the one he's sleeping with?"

Jeremy was following Dan down the hall, and Dan was not in the mood.

"We know he's on the Mets, because Lewis said they'd been in Vero Beach, Florida, for spring training, so there's that." Dan kept striding down the hall. Where the hell was Casey? "But we know he's an outfielder, Lewis said as much, and he's about the right age to be retiring next year, and, I mean, people have been saying for years that there was a reason he's always such a loner."

Dan and Casey's office was empty, and Jeremy followed him in. Dan sat on the couch in a heap, rubbed the bridge of his nose and looked at his watch. Twelve fifteen. Casey should be back. "You know," he said finally, and Jeremy was quiet. "Being a loner does not mean that he's gay."

"No," Jeremy said, "it most certainly does not."

Kim stuck her head in the door. "Hey, turns out Warren and his dad haven't spoken in almost ten years," she said.

"They haven't talked in ten years?" Jeremy asked.

"Ten years," she said. "There was a thing in SI about it last season, Dave pulled it up. All he said was --"

"Jesus, Kim!" Dan half-heartedly threw a script in the direction of a table. It skidded across the desk and fell off onto the carpet. He squeezed his nose and tried to breathe through his eyelids. "Does anyone know where Casey is?"

"He's not back?" Jeremy asked. Dan gestured at the empty office.

"I'm just saying," Kim said.

Dan pointed at her. "Oh, just get out, please?" Kim shrugged and walked off.

"Here's the thing," Jeremy said, undeterred.

Dan sighed. "Being estranged from his father does mean that he's gay."

"No," Jeremy said.

"It in no way means that he's gay."

"No," Jeremy agreed, "but he's also never been married --"

"You've never been married."

"But I don't think anyone here is saying I'm gay."

"I could," Dan snapped. "I could pull together three circumstantial facts and go ruin your career right now, every interview you'd do for the next ten years would be about that moment, right there, the gay sports anchor in the locker room --"

"Hey." Casey was back, just leaning in the open glass door, and Dan stopped. "What's going on?"

Dan groaned and rolled his eyes and Jeremy stood up. "We think Jake Warren is gay," Jeremy said.

"No," Dan started, "not we --"

"Okay," Jeremy said, "well, everyone who isn't Dan thinks that Jake Warren is gay, and that he's dating Preston Lewis."

"Preston Lewis?" Casey asked, playing with his tie. He'd gotten his hair trimmed. Dan shifted on the couch. "Everyone already knows he's gay. Plus, he's British."

"What does being British have to do with it?" Dan said under his breath.

"Well," Casey started, smiling, "almost nothing, except --"

"Here's the thing," Jeremy interjected. "Lewis was on Good Morning America. And Katie Couric asked him if he'd had any break between that last movie and this one, and Lewis said he'd gone to Vero Beach for spring training with his boyfriend."

Casey frowned. "That's not exactly --"

"So Katie says, oh, you're both big baseball fans? As if she's always interviewing gay movie stars who talk openly about their boyfriends on national TV, except then Lewis says --"

"My boyfriend IS a baseball player," Casey finished and Casey saying "my boyfriend" was rolling around in Dan's head a few times like someone had set the mikes to reverb.

"Yeah." Jeremy adjusted his glasses. "So, we think it's Jake Warren."

"Because he's... unmarried?" Casey asked, raising an eyebrow slightly.

"Yeah, plus --"

"Jeremy, I'm not married."

"Well, yes, I know, but you --"

"I mean, you realize we're not gonna do this unless we have something real to go on, right?"

"We have --"

"They've got bupkis," Dan said, not looking at Casey.

"We'll get --"

"Then go get it," Casey said, nodding to the bullpen. "Get on the phone and do your job instead of torturing Dan however it is you've been torturing him before I showed up to save the day."

"I wasn't --"

"Jeremy." Casey's voice was kind but firm, and Dan looked up. Jeremy shut the door behind him. Casey sat down at the table, loosening his collar. He was pretty dressed up for radio. "What's going on, Danny?"

"I think you pretty much just heard all they've got." Dan stood up and walked over to the computer.

"What's going on, Danny?"

Danny looked at the keyboard. "Jake Warren is gay," he said, finally.

It was quiet for what felt like a lifetime penalty, and Dan deleted the last sentence he'd written. Casey cleared his throat. "How do you know?"

"I know," Dan said.

"Danny, how do you -- oh. From Tulsa."

"Yeah."

Kim knocked on the door and opened it without waiting. "I just want to say," she said, "that I've been trying to get Michael to do it with another guy for, like, months now."

"What?" Casey asked, raising his eyebrows at Dan.

"Who's Michael?" Dan asked.

"Michael," Kim said. "Michael, my boyfriend?"

"But you want him to --"

"I mean, guys are always talking about two women together, so what's so different?" She looked like she really expected an answer.

"Uh, 'kay," Casey said.

"Kim," Dan said, "as much as we appreciate you sharing that with us --"

"We just don't care," Casey said, grinning and Kim backed out of the office with wide innocent eyes and her palms up, and the door slammed shut behind her.

"That girl is just..." Dan trailed off.

Casey looked at Dan again. "So, okay."

"Yeah."

"We'll still need confirmation, about Warren, I mean."

"I know."

"Okay," Casey nodded. "So don't worry," he said, and that made Dan worry more.

"Okay," Dan said.

"Okay," Casey said again. "So I've got this Red Wings tape --"

 

DAN LEFT THE office first and went to knock on Isaac's door.

"How you doing, Danny?"

Dan sat down. "I'm in a unique situation, I swear," he said. "Very unique."

"That's redundant, you know."

"I do know. But the word unique does not, itself, carry enough weight to express the uniqueness of my situation."

"Am I going to need a drink?"

"You heard the Preston Lewis story?"

"I did indeed," Isaac said. "Seems we've got ourselves a real witch-hunt."

"Maybe." Dan pressed his lips together. "The thing is, I might have confirmation."

"You have a reliable source?"

"Very reliable." Dan shuffled his feet on the floor. "Me."

Isaac raised his eyebrows. "You know," he said. "Fan interference is a stand-up double."

Dan stood up and circled the chair like a dog looking for a place to nap. Then he sat down again and rubbed his forehead a little. "What am I supposed to do?"

Now Isaac stood up and came around the front of his desk. "You understand, of course, that I have no idea what's going on. As long as you're okay with that, I'm perfectly happy to stand here and not really listen."

"Isaac, I slept with a major league ballplayer."

"Today?" Isaac only seemed half-interested.

"Twelve years ago."

Isaac looked him over. "I didn't realized you'd hit puberty twelve years ago."

Dan growled. "You're not helping."

"What do you want from me, my boy? A medal? Cause I'll give you a medal, I got a whole drawer full."

"I'm..." Dan chewed his words a minute. "I'm, mired in peculiar ethics."

Isaac leaned back against his desk. "You want to know if you should out this poor soul who fell prey to that Rydell charm all those years ago."

"I do. Want to know that. "

"Does Casey know?"

Dan shook his head.

"Seems to me that'd be a good place to start."

Dan felt less sure. "Why?" he squeaked.

"You gotta understand -- Danny, this is baseball. It's the American game and like anything else, it's bound to change and grow along with the rest of the us."

Dan looked up. "You don't seem particularly surprised. About me."

Isaac laughed. "I had to ask Dana four times if you and Casey were sleeping together," he said. "Forgive me if I never saw you as the straightest white boy on television."

Something in there made Dan queasy and he fought not to imagine what those conversations must have been like, Isaac insisting and Dana denying -- or maybe not denying -- and all of them stuck with the mental image of Dan's hands sliding across Casey's chest, Casey parting Dan's lips with his tongue. Dan shook his head several times but it was all still there and it just complicated things and things were already too complicated.

"Isaac."

"We report the news, we don't make it," Isaac said. "This isn't about you, Danny. But if Jake Warren's sleeping with Preston Lewis, that's news, and Lewis made it news -- we're just covering it. We let the story go and that's neglect. That looks like we're embarrassed. Are we embarrassed?"

"We are a little."

Isaac crossed to the door and opened it. "Get over it," he said. "Grow up. It's the twenty-first century and we've got work to do."

 

"YOU DON'T FIND it, like, intolerably hot in here with the door shut?"

Dan leaned back, as if he were holding it shut against some horrible invading force.

"I'm okay," Dan said.

"Open the door," Casey said.

Dan shook his head. "Let's say, for example, hypothetically --"

"That's redundant, you know," Casey said, and Dan rolled his eyes and went over to the take a seat at Casey's desk.

"Okay, I've gotten that, like, twice in the last two minutes. I know it's redundant. Can we just -- I have to tell you something, Case."

Casey seemed to get the gravity of it all and he widened his eyes and touched his lower lip with the pink tip of his tongue. "Shoot."

"Recap to me what you know so far," Dan said after a minute. "Tell me a story."

Casey groaned. "Okay, you understand that I've got actual work I'm supposed to be doing, right?"

"Ten-second recap," Dan said. "Everything you know about Jake Warren."

Casey pursed his lips. "Born in Tennessee," he said, and Dan nodded. "Three years in the minors, got picked up by the Tulsa Tornadoes when he was twenty-two. Back to the minors after the Tornadoes got sold, picked up by the Cards in -- '92?"

"Mm-hmm," Dan steepled his fingers.

"Cards for two years, did a short tour with the Giants, now he plays left field for the Mets."

"Good," Dan said. He squinted at Casey.

"Um... good, solid hitter. Sixty-three RBIs this year so far, eighteen strikeouts, thirteen or fourteen homers. Yeah. How'd I do?"

"You did good, Case," Dan said. "But we do this story and two weeks from now, swear to God, you ask anyone that question, they'll say --"

"Jake Warren is gay."

"Right."

"I see your point."

"But at the same time --"

"We're sports anchors," Casey finished. "We report the news. We don't make it. Except this time --" And then if there was any doubt whether Casey got it, whether all this not-so-careful skirting of the real issue had obscured anything, it was all pretty clear on Casey's face. Casey leaned in. "Danny..." he said. "You slept with Jake Warren."

Dan swallowed. "I did."

Casey stood up. "Okay," he said. "I thought you might -- we'll be okay." But it was strange, the phrasing, we'll be okay, and Casey's expression was unreadable.

"We have to go to the rundown," Dan said. "Did you want me to pick up the WNBA thing?"

"We'll look at it," Casey said. "Dana's gonna want to bump up the Triple Crown to the twenties."

"Stupid horses," Dan said.

"Totally," Casey said.

Dan stood up but his legs were wobbly and he'd sweated through the back of his shirt. Casey wasn't looking at him anymore.

"Preston Lewis isn't that hot," Dan said, and Casey made some sort of agreeing sound as he pushed open the door.

 

"SO WHERE ARE we on Jake Warren?" Dana asked first thing. Dan slunk down in his chair a little and played with his notes.

"It's not ready," Casey said.

"Well, is it going to be? Maybe you hadn't noticed, we run this little thing called a news operation around here, and generally our job is to get things ready."

"It's not ready," Casey said again. Dan looked up, then glanced away when Dana met his eye. From the bus in Iowa, gas station lights ten miles out look like a ballpark. That was the first year the Cubs played night games at home, new fluorescents hovering over the El like a beacon. He'd been twenty-two.

"Well, is there a chance it might be ready tonight? This is -- I don't have to tell you guys that this is huge, this is ratings central, this is sex and baseball and history and --"

"It's not about sex, Dana," Casey said, his voice breaking. "We're talking about people's lives, and we shouldn't do it until we're gonna do it right. No matter what kind of ratings we're talking about." He wanted Casey to make it big, he always had. He was sure of it in the way he could answer without thinking that he'd always love baseball more than football. And that wasn't just about Jake. It was about the thrill of the grass, nine long innings unwound on a hot sunny day, none of the sticky violence of a Sunday morning. Casey was the guy who went all the way, and if Dan had to be the guy who kept reminding him he could, he was okay with that. He was the first person Casey thanked when he won the Red Smith writing prize and he was the guy Casey wrote all the jokes for.

"This is the perfect opportunity for us," Dana said. "SportsCenter and Fox won't touch it, they're so confused about their policy on outing that they'd say no comment if you asked where they spent their summer vacation. If we're within spitting distance of getting it done for tonight, we're slotting it."

"Dana --"

"Casey, we're not dropping this story."

"We don't HAVE a story yet, damn it!" said Casey. Dan felt the room grow very still around him and his cheeks burned because it wouldn't have been so bad if Casey had been just a little bit less insistent that it didn't matter. It had mattered. It had mattered a great deal. But it had been a long time ago, his first real story, and now he and Jake both had names that people recognized.

After a minute, Dana said, "Tell me what we know. I want confirmed facts only."

Kim pushed back her chair. "We know he's gay."

"Can we prove it?"

Casey slammed his fist into the table. "Jesus, Dana, it's not like somebody took pictures."

"Can we prove it?"

"No," Casey said, pushing his chair back.

Dana threw to Natalie with a pointed stare, and Natalie said, "Do we know anything?"

"We left three messages with Lewis' publicist," Elliott said.

"What about Nancy at the Mets?" Natalie asked.

"We haven't gone there yet," Elliott said. "Once we do that, we're going to be looking at legal."

"It's after five," Dana said. "They won't get anywhere with that today. Call her." Elliott nodded. "What about independent? I thought we had a guy."

Dan looked up. Casey shot an angry glare at Dana.

"We have a guy?" Kim asked excitedly. "Really?"

"We do not have a guy!" Casey stood up, sat down again. "Jesus, people, we do not have anything that's close enough to run. Let's find another story."

Dan raised his head to find Natalie staring him down. "Dan, what do you think?"

"What else have we got?" he asked wearily, and he had that pain in the bottom of his stomach that he knew meant he'd taken a wrong turn. "WNBA? Triple Crown wrap-up?"

Jeremy nodded. "Also, we've got four guys proposing during the seventh inning stretch at a Royals game."

"To each other?" Dana asked.

"Uh, no."

"We've got film?" Natalie looked at Elliott, who nodded. "That's not bad. What else?"

Jeremy consulted his notes. "You may not know this, but it was a gay baseball player, Glenn Burke, who invented the high five."

Casey stood up. "I'll call the Mets publicity office." Dana nodded, gathered her papers.

"Back here at ten," Natalie said. "Jeremy, let's work on the Triple Crown wrap-up to fill." The door to the conference room opened and Isaac came in, looking bemused.

"You find something to fill for the Warren story?" Isaac asked, and Dana nodded. "Well, get rid of it again, because we just got scooped by E!."

Dan bit his tongue.

"Isaac, I think I heard you wrong," Dana said. "You said we got scooped by E? The letter E? What is this, Sesame Street? Tomorrow, Sports Night falls prey to the evil Q."

"The network E!, the entertainment channel," Isaac said. "Preston Lewis and Jake Warren just got done telling Steve Kmetko --"

"We got scooped by Steve Kmetko?" Dana asked. "You've gotta be --"

"Well, he did date an Olympic champion," Kim said. "So he probably knows a little something about --"

Natalie coughed. "Diving?"

"We got scooped by E!?" Dana said again. "Is there any time in the history of television that E! has scooped anyone?"

"They said they were gay? They talked about being gay?"

"Yes, Kim, they're gay," Elliott said. "I think we pretty much established that already."

Isaac headed for the door. "You all can sit around here and debate the sad journalistic state of being scooped by a network that shows reruns of Melrose Place or you can go get some tape and give us something original on this whole mess that we can use."

 

EVEN THOUGH DAN wanted to say "you're such an asshole, Case," when he shut the office door, he knew it would come out "thank you." So instead he said, "Don't."

"Danny?"

Dan sat down behind his desk. "Look," he said. "I really don't -- you don't have to protect me."

Casey spat out a laugh. "I'm not protecting you."

"Okay."

And really, Dan knew it, which is why "thank you" was still so close, and why he wanted to stand up and run his hands through Casey's hair and say "shut up, shut up, it's too late now, I know and you know and it's okay Case, it's okay," but now Casey was peering down at him, all squirrelly with his tongue against his top teeth and his head cocked to the side just a little.

Dan blew air. "So anyway --"

"You don't have to say anything," Casey said, but Dan shook his head a couple times fast.

"Turns out, I do," he said. "Men turn me on. Jake Warren turned me on. You --turn me on, Case. There it is."

It was clear Casey didn't want to smile but he did anyway, briefly till it twisted into the caricature of a thoughtful frown.

"I do?"

"Don't let it go to your head. It's not a compliment, it's just a thing that is. It's --you know, it's never a compliment when people say that, not really, not if they mean it." Dan felt a little sick, but brave, he was on a roll. "It's an ugly, bald confession is what it is. It makes me weak and stupid and I'm already weak and stupid --"

"You're not."

"Please don't."

Casey bared his teeth and looked angry. "That's -- that wasn't supposed to be a compliment either, Danny. I'm not protecting you, I'm not like, throwing my coat over a puddle for you because I don't think you can handle --"

Dan stood up. "God, Casey, shut the fuck up."

Casey shook his head. "How is this fair? How did this happen that you go to bare your soul and I'm supposed to stand here --"

"I want to tell everybody," Dan said.

Casey blew him off. "Okay," he said. "But just -- can you wait a minute? Can we, like, not obsess about politics for a minute and deal with the fact that I'm having this profound understanding --"

"You're having?"

"Yes, Danny," Casey said, collapsing against his desk. "I'm having. You're --you're stuck with this perpetual misconception that you're unworthy, that you're second best --"

"Mr. Ninety-two, who makes twice as much money as I do --"

"Jesus Christ, Danny, I'm trying to tell you --"

Dan wanted to stomp his feet and throttle Casey, who was standing there looking sleek and smug and gorgeous with hangdog eyes. "This isn't about you, Casey!"

Casey licked his lower lip. "What if it is?"

Dan didn't really know what to do with that. "Tell me," he said. Out the glass Natalie was tugging her sleeve down through her jacket and Jeremy was looking for his keys.

"Anthony's!" Kim shouted, breezing past the office, and Dan waved at her.

"You want to go?" Casey asked.

Dan nodded. "After this."

"Thought you forgot," Casey laughed over an exhale.

"Nope."

"So all I'm saying is that with you going through all this --" Casey gestured at nothing. "I might have found myself a little jealous. It might have opened my eyes. Maybe."

Now Dan smiled because Casey was tall and wobbly before him, not protecting him, not playing anymore, just talking like men do. "Okay," Dan said. "That's fair."

Casey just smiled. "Good," he said.

Isaac came by with his cane and his coat and he banged on the door twice with the side of his hand like victory, and when Dan looked at him, he winked.

"We're good at talking around things," Dan said.

"We're very good."

Jeremy and Natalie were walking with Isaac to the elevator, and Isaac shot Dan one last glance through the glass door before turning the corner and walking away.

"Soon we'll talk at things," Dan said.

Casey grinned. "And about things. You'll tell me about Tulsa."

Dan grinned too. "I might."

"Soon we'll talk about things," Casey said. "We'll talk baseball."


End file.
